Flowking Stone Pulls a Mammoth Crowd to KCM with Oseikrom Shutdown Concert

Kumasi happens to be a city full of music lovers. However, for years now a mainstream artiste native of the Garden City hasn’t headlined a full concert. The rapper, singer and songwriter Flowking Stone gathered confidence to stage a concert dubbed “Oseikrom Shutdown Concert.” Before the event people doubted he could fill up the venue – Kumasi City Mall (KCM). But the “Go Low” hitmaker was able to prove doubters wrong. In a usual fashion, we review the event.
Performances: Upcoming artistes opened the stage up with short performances. Almost every serious upcoming musician was given the opportunity to climb the stage to display his/her talent. The Bantama Kings Club (BKC) guys and Steez Realm acts really moved the crowd with their energy-filled performances.
The “Problem” hitmaker, Guru brought the heat to the stage, further bringing out his NKZ signee Kin Paluta, who was introduced as the future of Kumasi music industry. Epixode busted some freestyles off the top when he quizzed the crowd to spell Flowking, and he’d use each alphabet to form lines live on stage. I had my mouth wide open when Strongman came on stage and the crowd couldn’t keep calm for a second, completing his famous lines, and singing along to all songs he performed.
The main action came up when the man of the event climbed up stage with a boxing costume, and introduced himself as the MC from thence. He called the “Gbee Naabu” hitmaker up on stage. Yaa Pono made the audience love him so much they didn’t want him to leave. Then came Stone’s brothers, Okyeame Kwame and Kunta Kinte. From ‘old skuul’ to ‘new skuul’, the artistes excited the crowd so wonderfully, and yeah, it was my first time watching them perform “Ksi Boys” live. Okyeame did an awesome thing by rapping to the audience’s handclap. Teephlow performed his hit songs, and brilliantly taught the audience to sing along a song which features Stone off the “Phlowducation EP.”
In all, I’d say performances witnessed would give a typical music lover satisfaction, but leave him/her a desire for more.
Stage, Lights and Sound: The stage was well mounted, and was fairly wide. It was clearly strong, as some dancers stomped their feet hard on the stage but didn’t give any sign of breakage. The lights were bright, well enough to see the crowd, and whoever was on stage. Good execution for the lighting! Spending most of my time backstage, I almost thought the sound was trash till I struggled to enter the crowd session and realized the sound was actually okay. There were technical hitches that wouldn’t let the event flow smoothly. It was the major down of the event, as it kept the background organizers very busy.
Timing: Knowing well that the event wouldn’t be able to hold till daybreak, the event which performances started at 9:30 pm didn’t start early enough. There was a tall list of performers, so it’d have been better if it started earlier. The show had to end abruptly when there were a number of artistes backstage who had not performed.
Although they’ve worked throughout the Christmas festivities, the MCs saw to it that the audience coming out to show support was not wasted. El Presidente and a host of others were on fire last Saturday. As usual, the DJs were unstoppable from doing what they do best.
Flowking Stone received the love he wanted, and was successfully able to hold a concert of his own, with the help of Bie Gya Bitters, Special Ice Mineral Water, RentAir, Zoomlion, Indomie, Icy Cup, etc. We only look up to the next great thing Flowking has for the garden city.
Words by Joseph ‘Aqweci’ Ofori